Monday, April 27, 2015

About four months after the Forza Win-ter, the Forza Winners (yeah, I'm going to go ahead and call us that) signed ourselves up for Forza's spring event, whose main event was chicken.

Completely honestly, we were not as impressed with this event as we were with the (frankly) phenomenal fonduta we went to at Christmas. But it was tasty enough. We started with a complimentary cocktail.

I'm not really sure what it was but Ben and I handed over ours to Steph, who seemed to actually enjoy it. So, at least one of us did.

The terrine was actually amazing. I could have literally eaten it all night - sadly, these portions were between the six of us on the end of the table, which was about a good amount for an appetiser.

We went with the least expensive of the three options for red wine...which reminds me, note to self: next time upgrade. This wine was fine but...I wasn't a huge fan of it personally.

Our chicken was mercifully the first to arrive!

As others looked to our dinner with envy (as rightly they should as it was a good ten minutes before anyone elses chicken arrived), we appointed Chris as Chief Carver, and a good job he did as well. Tucking into the chicken, and watching potatoes disappear from under it, we pretty much picked the carcass clean, about in time for the veggies to appear and have nothing to be on the side of!

The blackened leeks disappeared fairly rapidly...it may be obvious.

And we happily nibbed on the purple sprouted broccoli.

Rhubarb and custard was our sweet ending...

Well, I won't be leaping to go to the next Forza event but, it entirely depends on the cuisine. I wouldn't buy into my opinion here too much, I'm not much of a roast dinner person. Everything was well prepared and tasty and we all left happy enough...I just hope the next event involves pizza.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Chris is a pain in the ass. He is also one of my best friends. But he'll never tell you anything which is very annoying. Such was the situation when he turned around and informed us that he was going back to Uni to do a Masters in Oceanography, and was subsequently moving out of London and to Southampton. But anyway, it meant we had somewhere to go and visit!

We started with watching the six nations, obviously, and commenced a bit of a pub crawl. This pub was particularly nice, the White Star.

Not least because they had honey roast peanuts!

This pub, The Red Lion, was AWESOME though! It was once Henry V Court Room - scene of the trial of those who conspired against the life and crown of Henry V in 1413, prior to Henry's departure to Agincourt the conspirators were found guilty and executed outside the nearby bargate - this is taken from the sign you can see behind Ben's head.

There was a parrot as well. We played darts upstairs.

Just a friendly game of 'Killer'. And then, after pubbing all day, we decided to go to the cheesiest bar in Southampton...Pop World...where we realised that we are sadly too old for places like this.

The next day Chris took us to see a couple of sights in Southampton.

This is the hotel where a lot of the first class passengers stayed before boarding the Titanic, and below, the commemorative stone for those lost.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

This was about a month ago now, but did you hear about the mini golf course they set up in Shoreditch? Ben let me know about it some time before Christmas, and of course, I wanted to go. I love mini golf, so combine it with cocktails and I'm sold. We went to book it, only to find that it was almost entirely booked up so...it had to February for us. When it rolled around I was pretty excited to go.

Walking off the main road, past a backstreet to find this place was a little eventful...a drunken man and some builders were having a bit of a tuffle, I was glad it wasn't quite night yet, but, round a corner and we found the door! We were about 10 minutes early for our booked time slot so we were a little surprised when the woman behind the desk offered us a slot for one hour after we arrived. We may have missed a detail in an email about that, but, shrugging off the extra time, we went and grabbed a drink.

It was done out like a bit of a clubhouse, lots of green and wood and sofas.

It was definitely busy and some people had gone all out with the theme...

Ben and I happily soaked up the atmosphere and about 10 minutes before our time slot, we joined a pretty slow moving queue for the golf.

So, as you can see, it was pretty busy. Ben and took our turn and then waited for our turn for the next hole. We most definitely did more waiting than queueing, fortunately, they've got people running around asking you if you'd like more drinks, though they would also cheekily cut across the holes...they're lucky they didn't get in the way when I was playing or I'd be livid...I'm competitive after all. So don't interfere with the game. The course itself was exactly what you'd expect of a mini golf course, nothing particularly original.

Ben and I had a good time and I won, obviously. I don't think I'd go to another mini golf event though...I'd stick to my less hip versions with smaller queues because, quite frankly, I'm a nerd and I take mini golf a bit too seriously... The event has been and gone now but, if you fancy giving it a go, here's the website! http://swingersldn.co.uk/

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Months of planning and a fairly long flight and Ben and I landed in Texas to visit Shreena and Krishna.

Arriving on Thursday evening, Ben and I had very little energy for much except to excitedly greet our good friends and hungrily munch the pasta that Shreena made us before going to bed at about 4am UK time.

The next day, after a bit of a lie-in, we headed out with Krishna to visit the San Jacinto monument which commemorates the site of the battle of San Jacinto, the decisive battle of the Texas revolution. It is the world's tallest masonry column. On our way we stopped for lunch at Chick-Fil-A, which was as tasty as Krishna promised it would be.

We wanted to go up to the top but the lift wasn't working, sadly, so we nipped across to quickly see the battleship and then we had to make a quick run back to the house because Ben had forgotten his ID and we were trying to make a boat-tour of the port.

We got to the port just in time to see the tour-boat drive by...which was pretty funny. So we went bowling instead.

We also found out what it means when you say 'yes' to wanting your coronas 'dressed'.

Haha! We hit the arcade before heading back to see Shreena and going out for dinner.

The next day was all hands on deck to prepare for Shreena's baby shower on Sunday. So, after a morning of sticking and hanging, Shreena and I disappeared to do a bit of shopping and to get a mani-pedi! The next day, the baby shower was a-go!

There were games, drinks and general joviality! Not to mention some seriously tasty food and cocktails.

The next day, Krishna took us Western shopping. Seriously, so many cowboy boots! And then we went to Saint Arnold's brewery.

Krishna told us the story of Saint Arnold...but I've totally forgotten it. I'll have to update this when I get a chance to chat to him. After a couple of these tasty brews though, we headed out to the RODEO!

The next day, we went to Athena gun club. Shooting, being one of those things that you definitely cannot do in England, was one of the things I was really keen to do in the US. Now I will fully admit it freaked us out how readily we were handed guns in this club, but you can have a really good time shooting when you do so safely. And that's exactly what we did.

I will say that the first time you fire a gun, it is pretty scary. But for the most part we really enjoyed ourselves!

And the next day, on our ten day holiday of cramming everything we want to do in Texas into ten days, we went to NASA.

NASA was absolutely awesome. We missed out on the tour to the control room, but we went on the 'red tour' which was pretty awesome in itself - you got to see the mock up room where all the astronauts train in replicas of the actual spacecraft. The next day...I forget. But on our way there we went to see some giant Beatles.

And then we hit the arcade. Because we love our arcades.

Ben destroyed me on the lights out game. And then him and Krishna put their shooting skills to practice.

Later, we headed over to Austin. Where we went out to Pluckers which is this amazing chicken wing place.

Where they were also playing bingo, which none of us won, though we cam close a few times.

That green drink was delicious! After this we headed out for some drinks!

Pretty awesome bar this one. We hit another one but...we were having too much fun to take pictures. The next day, Krishna and Shreena took us round Krishna's university campus.

Ben bought me a cuddly Bevo. This is the university mascot. Krishna told us where the name came from. Apparently...and I hope this is right...a rival team stole the bull after a defeat and branded the score 13-0 onto the bull. The university changed it to Bevo. After a day of enjoying the weather and wandering around, Krishna took us to Salt Lick - the best damn BBQ ever.

We chilled and made the most of seeing Shreena and Krishna before we had to leave. And were very pleased to find out that the birth of little Mia Avni followed not too long after we left.